TY - JOUR
AU - Sechrest, Lawrence
AB - Book Reviews RISK AND BUSINESS CYCLES: NEW AND OLD AUSTRMN PERSPECTIVES. BY TYLER COWEN. LONDON: ROUTLEDGE, 1997 m|his~'~ very ambitious book starts with the high promise of a radically new and superior theory of business cycles, but when it ends the reader cannot resist the conclusion that the promise has gone unfulfilled. Tyler Cowen states his goal quite explicitly. He finds the "traditional" or "old" Austrian theory of business cycles (hereinafter ABC) to be inadequate and outmoded. Neverthe- less, Cowen sees merit in certain aspects of ABC, such as capital goods' comple- mentarity and the importance of intertemporal coordination. Therefore, he offers a "new" Austrian approach whose elements include rational expectations, real business cycle theory, and sectoral shifts, and whose organizing motif is the role of risk in entrepreneurial decision-making. This alternative, risk-based theory of business cycles (hereinafter RBBC) is presented by Cowen as a sophisticated and improved version of the "naive" ABC. It is the result of "grafting rational expecta- tions and modern finance theory onto the original Austrian theory" (p. 10). If such a procedure sounds unsavory and unlovely, I can assure the reader that the resulting amalgam is little better. The book is divided into five 
TI - Risk and business cycles: New and old Austrian perspectives
JF - The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
DO - 10.1007/s12113-998-1021-4
DA - 1998-07-28
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/risk-and-business-cycles-new-and-old-austrian-perspectives-myacS0WL6T
SP - 73
EP - 79
VL - 1
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -